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Food News | Deseret Newsen-usCopyright 2016, Deseret News Publishing CompanyFri, 09 Dec 2016 00:00:01 MSTFri, 09 Dec 2016 20:56:34 MSTNewspapershttp://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rssCuba starts return to normal as mourning for Castro endshttp://www.deseretnews.com/article/765691244/Cuba-starts-return-to-normal-as-mourning-for-Castro-ends.html?pg=all
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Music is playing in the streets again. Tourists are sipping mojitos at sidewalk cafes. Flags are flapping at full staff....
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HAVANA — Music is playing in the streets again. Tourists are sipping mojitos at sidewalk cafes. Flags are flapping at full staff. After nine days of national mourning for Fidel Castro, Cuba is slowly returning to noisy, boisterous normality.

Cuba is a country where sidewalks serve as living rooms and social clubs, but during the mourning period people mostly stayed indoors, watching television and avoiding any appearance of joviality.

With a government ban on selling alcohol and on playing live or recorded music after Castro's death, Cubans paid tribute to their longtime leader in near silence. They filed by the hundreds of thousands through special sites equipped with photos of Castro as a young guerrilla and books where people could separately sign both their condolences and an oath of loyalty to Castro's socialist, single-party system.

"It was very quiet. In a bar, restaurant, you could hear the air conditioning," Janine Jenner, a German tourist, said Monday as she had a glass of sangria in Old Havana. "Today it's like someone turned the noise on everywhere. It's like the pulse of the city is back. People smile more."

Clamor is a constant in Cuba. Music of all types — salsa, reggaeton, pop — blares at top volume at all hours of the day. People rev motorcycle engines for hours under their neighbors' windows, or flatten hundreds of soda cans for recycling at 7 a.m. on a Saturday.

All that noise suddenly hushed the morning after Castro's Nov. 25 death was announced. Even the incidental noise of Cuban life — children laughing while playing in the streets, neighbors shouting to each other — seemed to fall away.

Life started creeping back on Monday.

Bars and cafe were selling alcohol again and Cubans could be seen discretely sipping beers on stoops or drinking from little boxes of cheap white rum. The crowds of foreigners wandering through Old Havana were more overt, chugging beers on the street and dancing with drinks in hand as bands played for the first time in more than a week in tourist cafes.

People were once again greeting each with a "good day" after more than a week of only somber "hellos."

President Raul Castro, who on Sunday personally interred his older brother's ashes in a tomb fashioned from a granite boulder, has declared that Cuba will soon pass a law barring other memorials to Fidel, in keeping with his wishes to avoid a cult of personality developing after his death.

There has been no indication of how Raul's rule might be affected by his brother's death. He has been breaking slowly but steadily from Fidel's legacy during his 10 years in power, implementing a series of free-market reforms and restarting diplomatic relations with the U.S. Fidel publicly inveighed against the United States and capitalism in his final months, but it wasn't clear if his objections had any concrete effect on Raul's decision-making.

In neighborhoods across Havana, street vendors hawked their goods again after more than a week of silence. A piercing tune on a pan flute alerted people that the knife-sharpener was passing by. A man selling bricks of sweet pastry for $2 shouted, "Cappuccino cake, 50 pesos!"

Ordinary music was the slowest to return. On a two-hour walk across three Havana neighborhoods in the afternoon, an Associated Press reporter heard music only four times, all at low volume — twice from idling cars and twice from open apartment windows.

Music student Maikel Ramirez Ortega normally plays his trumpet on the Malecon seafront for three to four hours every afternoon. After stopping during the mourning period, he returned Monday afternoon and blew a few tentative notes under a footbridge, out of the public eye. It didn't feel quite right, even though it was now allowed, he said.

"It still feels like we're in mourning," he said.

The mood was still somber across the island. In the eastern city of Santiago, where Castro's ashes were interred on Sunday, hotel bartender Mailen Fuentes said things didn't feel normal yet.

"It's going to take time to get used to the idea that Fidel is no longer here," she said. "We feel sad. It's too soon."

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Mon, 05 Dec 2016 22:21:00 MSTChef credited with inventing General Tso's Chicken has diedhttp://www.deseretnews.com/article/765691170/Chef-credited-with-inventing-General-Tsos-Chicken-has-died.html?pg=all
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The chef credited with inventing General Tso's Chicken, a world-famous Chinese dish smothered in a sweet sauce that was never...
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NEW YORK — The chef credited with inventing General Tso's Chicken, a world-famous Chinese dish smothered in a sweet sauce that was never a staple in China, has died in Taiwan at 98.

Peng Chang-kuei died of pneumonia last Wednesday in Taipei, his son, Chuck Peng, told The Associated Press. He was still cooking in the family's Taipei restaurant kitchen just a few months ago.

Peng first brought the sticky, sweet and spicy dish to New York about 40 years ago.

It's now on Chinese restaurant menus across the United States, exploding in popularity after President Nixon visited China in 1972. The dish also reportedly became a favorite of famed statesman Henry Kissinger, who with Nixon helped open the communist country to the West, spotlighting its culture and food.

But General Tso's chicken was never part of the Chinese culinary tradition.

The chef created the dish in the 1950s in Taiwan, where he fled in 1949 with Chiang Kai-shek after the communists took over, said Chuck Peng, speaking from his home in Taipei.

In Taiwan, the chef helped welcome the commander of the U.S. Navy's 7th Fleet in the Pacific with a banquet that included the new culinary creation named after a 19th-century Chinese military leader from Peng's native Hunan Province.

By the 1970s, he was in New York running a restaurant named after himself near the United Nations on Manhattan's East Side. Kissinger was a frequent guest, said Chuck Peng.

"General Tso's Chicken is so famous because of Henry Kissinger, because he was among the first to eat it, and he liked it, so others followed," said Peng.

Americans quickly took to what is now a mound of deep-fried chunks of floured chicken, smothered in sweetness that usually includes soy sauce, sugar, ginger and other spices.

In the dish's first incarnation, the chicken reportedly was not fried, and its unsweetened flavor came from garlic, soy sauce and chilis.

The story of the delicacy is told in a 2014 documentary called "The Search for General Tso," which traces the roots of Chinese food in America through the iconic dish.

Chuck Peng runs the family's chain of 10 restaurants in Taiwan, all called Peng's.

Until he was hospitalized a few months ago, his son said Peng was a daily presence at their flagship Taipei restaurant which opened after the chef left New York in 1983. The restaurant space on East 44th Street was later occupied by a steakhouse that also is gone.

"My father thought other people's cooking was no good," his son said, chuckling. "The way he cooked was different, it was much better."

While he was "very good to other people, he was very hard on his family" — seven children from three mothers. "He was very demanding, he didn't want us to make any mistakes."

Some of Peng's hundreds of students plan to attend his funeral on Dec. 15 in Taipei.

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Fri, 02 Dec 2016 19:23:00 MSTCoca-Cola No. 1 in Japan with drinks galore, but not Cokehttp://www.deseretnews.com/article/765691084/Coca-Cola-No-1-in-Japan-with-drinks-galore-but-not-Coke.html?pg=all
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Coca-Cola has been the No. 1 beverage maker in Japan for half a century, but it's not thanks to the popularity of Coke....
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EBINA, Japan — Coca-Cola has been the No. 1 beverage maker in Japan for half a century, but it's not thanks to the popularity of Coke. Instead, the American soft-drink brand has adapted to the quirky ways this society quenches its thirst.

Coca-Cola's nearly 1 million vending machines account for about half of all the vending machines in Japan. Many of them do stock Coke and Coke Zero. But most of the beverages sold by those state-of-the art machines have nothing to do with the company's namesake soda.

Among the bigger favorites are "Georgia" brand canned coffee, orange-flavored water and of course, green tea, the traditional drink of choice,

Japan is The Coca-Cola Co.'s second-biggest market after the U.S., raking in more than 1 trillion yen ($10 billion) in annual sales. But consumers here aren't crazy about bubbly drinks like Fanta and Sprite, other perennial U.S. favorites.

Instead, the notoriously fad-loving Japanese flit from one trend to another across an array of weird product offerings, such as soda drinks with odd flavors like smelly durian fruit or garlicky kimchee that mostly are attention-getting products intended for fun.

Though its product offerings don't go quite that far, Coca-Cola has 850 different beverages in Japan alone, not counting discontinued brands. Among the most popular is Qoo, a water-drop-shaped forest creature designed to appeal to Japan's cult of the cute.

"It is so difficult to survive," Takashi Wasa, senior vice president at Coca-Cola Japan, told The Associated Press at the company's Tokyo headquarters.

The odds of having a hit are "Maybe just three out of a thousand," he said.

Among 20 Coca-Cola global brands that bring in $1 billion or more in annual sales, four came from Japan: the Georgia coffee lineup; Aquarius, a Gatorade-like drink; I Lohas bottled water and Ayataka green tea. Other global top-sellers are Coke drinks or were added through acquisitions, such as Minute Maid and Matte Leao.

Matte Leao, an herbal tea extremely popular in Brazil, is an example of adapting to local tastes.

But the company's Japan operations take that to an extreme, said Raymond Shelton, senior executive officer for Coca-Cola East Japan.

"I have traveled the world for Coca-Cola, and I have never seen such a variety of products, and such an intensive pace of new launches," he said.

"Japanese consumers drink across beverage categories each and every day so I would say they have a much broader set of demands," Shelton said.

Over the past decade or so, green tea has grown into a 777 billion yen ($7.5 billion) packaged beverage market in Japan; many Japanese now prefer tea conveniently packaged in plastic bottles, rather than steeped in teapots.

That makes Ayataka, which sells for 140 yen ($1.30) for a half liter (1 pint) bottle, an important brand for Coca-Cola. Developed in partnership with 1,600-year-old Kyoto-based tea grower Kanbayashi Shunsho, Ayataka also is sold in Singapore, Hong Kong and Taiwan.

Ads for Ayataka tea feature a taste test by Kyoto apprentice geishas and Japanese chefs vouching that its flavor is indistinguishable from tea from a teapot.

Unlike acidic bottled Coke, green tea requires special precautions during is bottling to prevent spoilage and preserve its flavor. Coca-Cola has invested about 40 billion yen ($360 million) since 2014 to double its assembly lines in Japan to nine and accommodate such aseptic production.

At Coca-Cola's plant in Ebina, southwest of Tokyo, bottles and caps are splashed with a decontaminating chemical, and then rinsed with blasts of water. Bottles filled with tea from giant vats flash by, 900 per minute. They're inspected, labeled and then boxed in robotic lines: a non-stop parade of bottled teas circling the plant round-the-clock.

Since retailers only stock in-demand products, pressure is high to keep coming up with new products, or at least new adaptations.

Coca-Cola's competitors in this tea growing nation, led by Ito En, a traditional tea maker that pioneered bottled green tea in Japan, were quick to imitate Coca-Cola's lead in adding powdered tea to its green tea drinks to make them cloudier and more evocative of richer-tasting teas out of a teapot.

Some products are specifically developed as "kawaridane" or "weird items," just to attract attention, like cucumber-flavored Pepsi. Or Pepsi Strong 5.0 GV, for "gas volume," which has extra fizz.

"It's that extra burp factor," said Akira Kiga, a spokesman for Suntory Beverages & Food, which sells Pepsi in Japan and trails Coca-Cola with No. 2 market share. "We want people to notice and see that we're a fun brand."

Still, when it comes to solid earnings, Suntory, like Coca-Cola, is counting on three segments — water, coffee and green tea.

"We do want to work on building strong brands that have staying power," Kiga said.

Yoshiyasu Okihira, an analyst at SMBC Nikko Securities in Tokyo, estimates that carbonated sodas like Coke and Fanta comprise a fifth of Coca-Cola's Japan sales, with coffee and tea accounting for 40 percent.

Coca-Cola's legions of vending machines, many offering piping hot drinks on chilly days, are a big asset. To capitalize on that advantage, the company is introducing smartphone applications that award one free drink for every 15 bought on Coca-Cola vending machines, or that send Spotify music playlists depending on the drink purchased.

The Japanese tea products are a strong asset in global markets as people become increasingly health conscious. Japan, with its faster aging, picky consumers, increasingly is leading such trends, Okihira says.

"Roasted barley tea, for example, has global potential, and Americans may really like it," Okihira said.

Like many Japanese, 50-year-old cab driver Masataka Sakabe drinks a variety of beverages every day, including canned coffee to keep awake on long shifts. But he also loves Coke, especially with greasy food like fried chicken or French fries.

"I love Coke, the red kind, not the diet kind, that original flavor. It makes you feel so refreshed," he said.

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Mon, 28 Nov 2016 20:44:00 MSTA desire named street cart: Red tape stifles NYC vendorshttp://www.deseretnews.com/article/765691020/A-desire-named-street-cart-Red-tape-stifles-NYC-vendors.html?pg=all
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With a guy selling pretzels and hot dogs on every other block, Manhattan must seem to tourists like a Shangri-La for street...
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NEW YORK — With a guy selling pretzels and hot dogs on every other block, Manhattan must seem to tourists like a Shangri-La for street food vendors — a place where any entrepreneur willing to stand in bad weather for long hours can hustle up a living. In reality, though, New York's food cart business is no picnic.

For decades, the city's regulatory scheme has made it next to impossible to obtain a new permit to operate a food cart or truck. That's locked thousands of vendors into a black-market system where they are forced to pay huge amounts to "rent" one of the city's roughly 4,200 existing permits from do-nothing middlemen. Or else, they can risk hefty fines by operating illegally.

Unable to get a permit of his own, Mohammed Shaheedul Huq, who operates a cart in downtown Brooklyn, paid $18,000 upfront to lease one from a man who pays the city just $200 every two years for the license.

"I have no choice," said Huq, who was a stockbroker in his native Bangladesh but now rooms in one of Brooklyn's poorest neighborhoods. "He's supposed to not sell it to me. I'm supposed to not buy from him. All departments know how it works, but nobody takes any action."

That could be changing. The New York City Council is looking at adopting legislation that would create 600 new food vendor permits each year for a seven-year period, roughly doubling the number of carts and trucks allowed on the street.

Street vendors and their advocates hail the legislation, which has the support of the City Council's speaker, as a much-needed change to outdated rules they say have strangled entrepreneurship.

But others, like representatives of the city's business improvement districts, say there are already too many carts in prime locations as it is now. They want any increase in the number of permits to only follow after systematic enforcement of existing rules.

"If you lift the cap on the number of vendors without doing anything else, it's not like 600 vendors are going to spread throughout the five boroughs. They're just going to go where the money is," said Ellen Baer, co-chair of the NYC BID Association, which represents the city's 72 business improvement districts.

New York City capped the number of food vending permits at around 4,200 in the early 1980s after similar complaints from brick-and-mortar businesses about clogged sidewalks. Few people lucky enough to have gotten permits in the 1980s have willingly given them up. Instead, they rent them to people like Huq, even though such arrangements are a violation of city rules.

Only a minuscule number of permits become available in any given year, roughly 50, according to the city. A waiting list that was opened in 2007 with 2,500 spots still has about 1,700 people on it.

Thousands more vendors set up shop without any permit, though they run a risk of steep fines.

Delmy Zelaya, who runs a cart on a Queens street, said she might make $60 a day selling obleas, a Colombian snack that has a layer of caramel between two wafers. In the four years she's been doing it though, she's already been fined $3,000.

The system of people holding onto their permits and renting them out isn't fair, Zelaya said, especially for someone like her who's just trying to make extra income to help cover bills.

"I want to live and breathe," she said. "I don't want anybody to stop me."

The legislation introduced last month would hike the fee for a two-year permit to $1,000 and create a dedicated enforcement unit.

Sean Basinski, director of the Street Vendor Project at the Urban Justice Center, which advocates for vendors, said he favored removing the caps on permits entirely. But he called the bill "a serious and thoughtful and reasonable effort to get at the heart of the problem, which is the lack of opportunity for people."

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Sat, 26 Nov 2016 13:03:00 MSTObama makes final Thanksgiving turkey pardonhttp://www.deseretnews.com/article/765690970/Obama-makes-final-Thanksgiving-turkey-pardon.html?pg=all
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President Barack Obama got the holiday mood started at the White House on Wednesday with the traditional pardoning of the...
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WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama got the holiday mood started at the White House on Wednesday with the traditional pardoning of the national Thanksgiving turkey, this time with his nephews standing in for daughters Malia and Sasha.

The light-hearted ceremony in the Rose Garden also featured Iowa-raised turkeys Tater and Tot, with the latter receiving the formal reprieve.

Obama said he has used the past seven pardoning ceremonies to embarrass his daughters with what he called a "corny-copia" of bad jokes about turkeys. "This year, they had a scheduling conflict. Actually, they just couldn't take my jokes anymore," the president said.

His nephews, Austin and Aaron Robinson, filled in admirably. Obama joked they had not yet been turned cynical by Washington. "They still believe in bad puns. They still believe in the grandeur of this occasion," Obama said. "They still have hope."

The White House asked people on Twitter to vote for which turkey will receive the pardon, though both will get a reprieve. The White House even provided a biography for each bird to help voters with their decision. For example, Tater's favorite snack is worms. Tot prefers tomato slices. Each 18-week-old bird weighed in at about 40 pounds.

While only one could be named the "National Thanksgiving Turkey," the White House said that both birds will be sent to their new home at Virginia Tech's "Gobblers Rest" where they will be cared for by veterinarians and students.

The ceremony also gave Obama a chance to reflect on the spirit of Thanksgiving. Obama said it's a time to remember that "we have a lot more in common than divides us." He also challenged Americans to show the world that the United States is a generous and giving country, and to make sure everyone has something to eat on Thanksgiving.

After the ceremony, the president and first family served Thanksgiving meals to residents of the Armed Forces Retirement Home in Washington. The campus is home to 405 previously enlisted service members, who represent every campaign since World War I. Obama served the turkey and gravy and briefly chatted with veterans and workers as they went through the line.

First Lady Michelle Obama served beans and spinach, while Sasha provided the mashed potatoes, dressing and cranberry sauce.

The pardoning ceremony brings levity to the endless list of serious issues the president faces daily. It inevitably also leads to several bad jokes that will leave the audience responding with "oohs" instead of laughs. A baby began crying after one of the jokes, prompting the president to reply: "Oh, it's not that bad. Now, come on."

Obama was not deterred by the groans or the crying saying he hopes that when somebody at the Thanksgiving dinner table says you can't have any more food, you'll respond: "Yes, we cran."

"I know there's some bad ones in here, but this is the last time I'm doing this so we're not leaving any room for leftovers," he added.

The National Turkey Federation began bringing live turkeys to the White House when President Harry S. Truman was in office. The White House Historical Association said Truman remarked they would "come in handy" for Christmas dinner. President John Kennedy spared the turkey presented to him in 1963, saying "let's keep him going." And President George H.W. Bush is credited with beginning the formal pardon tradition back in 1989, saying that year's bird was "granted a presidential pardon as of right now."

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Wed, 23 Nov 2016 17:47:00 MSTThanksgiving might be an American tradition, but not all families celebrate the samehttp://www.deseretnews.com/article/865667667/Thanksgiving-might-be-an-American-tradition-but-not-all-families-celebrate-the-same.html?pg=all
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Fifteen percent of Americans don&#8217;t celebrate Thanksgiving, according to a YouGov poll. And for the 85 percent of...
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Before gobbling up that Thanksgiving dinner, here is some food for thought.

Fifteen percent of Americans don’t celebrate Thanksgiving, according to a YouGov poll. And for the 85 percent of Americans that do celebrate, the chances of them all celebrating the same way are slim to none. Thirty-four percent will have more than eight people over to celebrate with, and 58 percent won’t drink any alcohol at dinner.

Even the way they dress will be different. Just 2 percent will dress up, 61 percent will dress “nice, but casual,” and 21 percent will wear sweatpants.

But the things that vary the most? The food they will eat, and what their favorite Thanksgiving foods are. Of those polled, 63 percent will eat “just a plain, regular turkey,” with the runner-up being a deep fried turkey, coming in at 6 percent. Five percent won’t eat a turkey at all.

A Gallup poll from 2004 found that just 49 percent of Americans surveyed said that turkey was their favorite Thanksgiving food, with stuffing coming in second with just 14 percent of the votes.

The least favorite food was voted to be cranberries and cranberry sauce with 21 percent of votes, followed by vegetables of any kind at 17 percent.

What do all these have in common? They are traditional meals served at Thanksgiving. What about non-traditional foods? Food served at Thanksgiving often vary by region, culture, and heritage.

Side dishes are perhaps the most common thing that vary by region. The New York Times decided to research the most distinct and the most Googled dishes served in each state at the Thanksgiving table. Read the methods and the results here.

Unsurprisingly, funeral potatoes is the most looked up recipe in Utah, but it is also the most looked up in Michigan, although there it is referred to as "cheesy potatoes."

Frog eye salad was the most commonly searched thing, with four different states looking it up. But what is frog eye salad? According to allrecipies.com, it is "an acini di pepe (or couscous) pasta salad with coconut, pineapple, Mandarin oranges, and marshmallows."

The second most common thing searched for was Snicker salad, also known as Snicker and apple salad. It is a mix of Snickers, Granny Smith apples, whipped cream, and either pudding or Cool Whip. The recipe can be found at allrecipies.com here.

The other most looked up recipes vary from state to state, and oftentimes recipes only show up on the map once or twice.

If you want to try some recipes from other places, check out another article from the New York Times here, which has recipes that channel every state (including Washington, D.C, and Puerto Rico) into each dish — or take a look at some of the recipes we have compiled below.

Children grumbling about healthier school meal rules championed by first lady Michelle Obama may have reason to cheer Trump's election as the billionaire businessman is a proud patron of Kentucky Fried Chicken and McDonald's while promising to curb federal regulations.

The Obama administration has made healthier, safer and better labeled food a priority in the last eight years, significantly raising the profile of food policy and sometimes drawing the ire of Republicans, farmers and the food industry. The first lady made reducing childhood obesity one of her signature issues through her "Let's Move" campaign.

In addition to the healthier school meal rules, the administration ushered a sweeping food safety law through Congress, pushed through several new food labeling regulations, started to phase out trans fats, added calorie labels to menus and suggested new limits on sodium in packaged foods. The White House has also fended off efforts in the Republican Congress to trim the nation's food stamp program.

"Food advocates are already nostalgic for the Obama era and will be playing defense for the next four years," says Sam Kass, a former White House senior adviser on nutrition and personal chef for the Obamas.

A look at some of the food regulations that could be scrapped — or tweaked — in the new administration:

MAKING SCHOOL MEALS GREAT AGAIN

Trump himself hasn't weighed in on school meal regulations. But Republicans, school nutrition directors and some in the food industry have balked at parts of the administration's rules that set stricter fat, sugar and sodium limits, among other standards, on foods in the lunch line and beyond. While many students and schools have now gotten used to the healthier foods, some still complain that the standards are costly and difficult to meet.

"I would be very surprised if we don't see some major changes on the school lunch program" and some other food issues, said Rep. Robert Aderholt of Alabama, the Republican chairman of the House subcommittee that oversees Agriculture Department spending.

Aderholt, who sits on Trump's agriculture advisory committee, says the Obama administration's approach was "activist driven" and people who voted for Trump are looking for a more common-sense approach.

Legislation is pending in both the House and Senate to revise some of the standards, and will likely be considered again next year. USDA could also make some changes on its own.

One of many names that have been floated as a possible agriculture secretary is Sid Miller, the Texas Agriculture Commissioner who repealed a state ban on deep fryers and soda machines at schools. Miller recently got in trouble when he used a profanity on Twitter to describe Democrat Hillary Clinton; he blamed a staffer and the tweet was deleted.

THE FOOD POLICE

In September, the Trump campaign pitched rolling back food safety regulations in a fact sheet, arguing they are burdensome to farmers and criticizing increased inspections of food manufacturing facilities as "overkill." The sheet referred to the "food police" at the Food and Drug Administration. The campaign later deleted the proposal from its website.

Congress passed new food safety regulations in 2010, a year after a salmonella outbreak linked to a Georgia peanut company killed nine people. Michael Taylor, former FDA deputy commissioner for foods who oversaw the food safety rules, says it wouldn't be popular with consumers to roll them back.

"Consumers are only getting more focused on safety, health and wellness," Taylor says.

Trump himself is a self-professed germaphobe who prefers eating at fast-food restaurants because he believes they have higher food safety standards.

FOOD STAMPS

Congressional Republicans have been examining food stamps since the program's cost grew to almost $80 billion annually after the recession. Participation and costs have dipped since its 2013 high, but conservatives have suggested tightening eligibility standards or increasing work requirements. House Speaker Paul Ryan has for years championed an overhaul to the program.

Democrats in the Senate have consistently objected to any changes, and will still wield influence. But they won't have the backing of a Democratic White House.

OTHER FOOD POLICY

Many other laws are either already in place or close to it, including a revised "nutrition facts" panel on the back of food packages, with a new line breaking out added sugars, a labeling law for genetically modified foods and calorie labeling on restaurant and supermarket menus.

In many cases, the rules are a result of compromise with industry. Kass says that pulling back may just create more cost and uncertainty for businesses.

"Unwinding things is really hard, especially when most of them have been implemented and industry has moved on," Kass says.

He predicts most of the regulations will stay, but that there will be little additional progress. Ongoing administration efforts to reduce sodium in food and antibiotics in meat could be casualties.

Margo Wootan, a lobbyist on nutrition issues for the Center for Science in the Public Interest, says advocates will continue to be aggressive at the state and local levels, hoping change will bubble up.

"The public is more interested than ever in nutrition and will continue to press companies," she says.

I look with longing at couples in the grocery aisle buying their single baguette, two apples and tiny blocks of cheese the size of a pack of playing cards. It’s like they live in a dollhouse or a mouse nest, nibbling delicately on their miniscule portions.

Meanwhile, I seem to live in the land of giants. Serving sizes have gone out the window. I buy apples by the crate. A dozen scrambled eggs only barely covers breakfast. If you peeked in my fridge right now, you’d see three blocks of cheese, each roughly the size of a bread loaf. The men in the house get little panicky when we drop below four gallons of milk.

I pride myself in keeping a well-stocked pantry, plus main fridge, backup fridge and deep freezer, because running out of food is worse than running out of clean underwear. It is unforgivable.

But here’s the thing: All those masses of food will be cleaned out in a week’s time. You will come and see a pauper’s pantry, stocked with nothing but lentils and a few stray cans of olives.

Which is why, when I go to the doctor and fill out all those info forms and they ask about my profession, I always hesitate. I could say journalist, but the reality is I spend most of my time either cooking food or wandering the grocery aisle wondering what will stick to my boys’ ribs so they’re not eating every 15 minutes. Peanut butter? Sausage? Sticks of butter dipped in chocolate? A block of cheese the size of the family dog?

There are definite plusses to feeding a crew of boys. For one, my math skills are awesome, especially my fractions. I can triple or quadruple any recipe with a single twirl of the measuring cups. My biceps have doubled in size hefting milk cartons, watermelons and whole frozen chickens. Most important, in a pinch, I can conjure a meal out of nothing but white rice and bread crumbs.

The sweet reward is the look on my sons’ faces when I feed them. They say the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. That is true tenfold for teenage boys. All they ask from their mothers are mated socks and a hearty meal.

Which is why dinner at our house resembles a medieval feast, with me unveiling platters of food to cheers and applause. The hungry lords of the manor gnaw through chicken, fish, great heaps of bread, salad, roasted vegetables and fresh fruit. All that’s missing are the hound dogs, chewing on the bones at their feet. If I reveal some sort of surprise dessert, it’s as if I’ve performed a magic spell right there in my kitchen.

That’s when being a mother to these man-children is most satisfying. I have done my work. I have succeeded.

Except.

A half hour later, I hear the creak of a cupboard in the kitchen, the familiar clink of bowl on spoon.

I go into my spotless kitchen to investigate.

Four boys sit hunched around the table, mowing their way through a box of Cheerios.

They look at me with wide, innocent eyes. “What?” they say through mouthfuls of milk. “We were starving.”

Tiffany Gee Lewis runs the website Raise the Boys at raisetheboys.com, dedicated to rearing creative, kind, courageous and competent boys. Follow it on Instagram and Twitter at raisetheboys. Email: tiffanyelewis@gmail.com

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Thu, 03 Nov 2016 11:15:00 MDTWhat is the best Halloween candy in Utah?http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865666028/What-is-the-best-Halloween-candy-in-Utah.html?pg=all
http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865666028/What-is-the-best-Halloween-candy-in-Utah.html?pg=all
We&#8217;ve scoured the internet to collect a smorgasbord of resources to help with this critical decision &#8212; knowing...
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Whether you plan to hand out candy to your neighborhood’s children or are just looking to sneak a snack out of your little one’s over-filled pillowcase, selecting the best candy is essential.

But what is the trick to knowing which treat is best?

We’ve scoured the internet to collect a smorgasbord of resources to help with this critical decision.

Deseret News Twitter poll

In a Deseret News poll asking followers on Twitter to choose their favorite Halloween candy, chocolate was the clear winner with 70 percent of votes. Gummy and chewy candy took second place with only 20 percent of votes.

https://twitter.com/DeseretNews/status/792386143937449987

National Confectioner's Association

The National Confectioner’s Association agrees. According to their own online survey taken by 1,391 people in October 2016, chocolate is definitely the fan favorite for the holiday.

“Chocolate in all its varieties is the star of Halloween, with 68 percent of people saying it is their favorite Halloween treat,” according to the NCA. “Traditional Halloween candy corn comes in second with 10 percent enjoying it the most, while chewy candy and gummy candy are in a dead heat with seven percent of Americans choosing them as their favorites. However, more than one-quarter of adults note that their favorite candy has changed over time.”

It's worth noting that candy corn was not included in the Deseret News Twitter poll.

Influenster State By State Candy Map

This map from influenster shows the most popular candies in each state based on product reviews from influenster.com.

But not everyone agrees with the results. There has been much debate about the map, with the Today Show and an article on Time disputing the claims. An article reviewing the map published by Bill Simmons' sports and pop culture website The Ringer also outlined some potential problems with the map.

In the article, writer Claire McNear explains that the data is a year old and respondents to the survey may have been given free samples of the candy they chose and allowed to leave multiple reviews, possibly skewing the results.

Candystore.com

Instead, McNear recommends a map of favorite candies created by CandyStore.com, and online candy shop. However, she admits that the map may still be flawed because most people don’t buy their Halloween candy online.

In this map, Jolly Ranchers took the top spot in Utah.

Candystore.com also provided a short explanation of each of the results. Here is what they had to say about Utah:

“Utahans love their Jolly Ranchers candies. Maybe because it harkens back to pioneer days? Utah still has five national parks and six national forests to preserve the pristine nature that settlers enjoyed back in the 1800s.”

Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups came in second in Utah. Tootsie Pops took third.

Brandon Gaille’s statistics.

On his website, Marketing Expert Brandon Gaille lists 42 statistics about candy, including a few about Halloween.

Among the most notable facts, he wrote that 4 percent of candy eaten is eaten for Halloween, 10 percent of internet searches for candy are searching for candy corn, and 50 percent of the average American’s candy intake is chocolate.

https://twitter.com/DeseretNews/status/792923975202418689
Here are some other facts taken from Gaille's blog:

Sweets Candy Factory

Sweet’s Candy Company in Salt Lake City sells candies like saltwater taffy, orange sticks and a collection of gummy-type candies.

Sweet's most popular candy during the Halloween season is their candy corn salt water taffy, according to Rachel Sweet, Sweet’s vice president of marketing.

Sweet thinks that nostalgia is the factor that is most important when people select candy to give to trick or treaters. She said that new candies have a hard time catching on because people want to give out the same types of candy they received when they were children.

She also suggested that parents freeze their Halloween candy in order to keep their children from splurging on it all at once.

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Mon, 31 Oct 2016 14:05:00 MDT7 Halloween hacks to make your holiday less stressfulhttp://www.deseretnews.com/article/865665717/7-Halloween-hacks-to-make-your-holiday-less-stressful.html?pg=all
http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865665717/7-Halloween-hacks-to-make-your-holiday-less-stressful.html?pg=all
Halloween can come with high expectations for food, parties, activities and more. Here are seven hacks you can try to lower...
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Halloween may be a time to dress up in frightening costumes and go door-to-door looking for treats, but planning a party for the occassion doesn't have to be so tricky.

And one mom from Colorado knows this all too well.

In an article for the Boston Globe, Rebecca Swanson discusses her not-so-good experience taking her son to one of the biggest Halloween festivals in town, an experience she argues would have been just as good as hosting a quiet party at home.

"We drove 30 minutes to get there, then painfully shoved my stroller-bound toddler across the rutted dirt parking lot for another 10 minutes," she wrote. "We stood in line to get in. Add 20 minutes. We paid admission fees, and I tried not to calculate how many future college courses we had just sacrificed for a day of 'chunkin punkins' and 'amazing-mazes.'"

The next year, however, she and her son celebrated the holiday at her sister's home. Instead of paying high admission fees to a popular holiday festival, she only paid $6 for a pumpkin and spent the rest of the afternoon enjoying the holiday peacefully with family.

But not all Halloween stories end up so happy. Sometimes it rains on Halloween, your pumpkin decorations get smashed, or one of your kids feels left out of the celebrations, according to NY Metro Parents.

As a result, we've compiled a few Halloween party hacks from Pinterest that can turn any party into quite the treat, despite dealing with a few setbacks.

Frankenstein bowling

Forget going to the bowling alley, with this easy craft all you need are a few cans and a tennis ball. According to Party Delights, re-create this experience by painting faces on cans you find around the house, stacking them on top of each other, and knocking them down with a ball.

Halloween bingo

Bingo doesn't have to be boring. According to the Crazy Little Projects blog, use candy corn, or any treat you can find, to play the popular game with a spooky twist. All you need to do is print out the free game cards from the blog and see who can get five candies in a row the fastest. Just make sure to steer clear of any allergies your players may have beforehand.

Rice Krispie Treat monsters

Thanks to the One Little Project blog, making Rice Krispie Treats has never been easier. In this three-ingredient recipe, heat Rice Krispie Treats and cooking oil in a pan. Then cut the treats into rectangles, warm colorful candy melts and pour them over the top, and place the candy eyes.

Witch brooms

From ihorror.com, these witch broom chocolate treats will have your guests soaring towards a full moon (or at least a full belly). All you need to do is press some pretzel sticks into the bottom side of peanut butter cups.

Additional hack — If one of your guests is allergic to peanuts, take some of the big pretzel sticks, dip them in chocolate and sprinkles, and make them into magical wands, AllRecipes.com suggests.

Pumpkin patch dirt cups

For those kids who don't just want to play in the dirt, here's a treat they can actually eat. To make these pumpkin patch dirt cups, smash Oreo cookies, without the icing, until they resemble dirt. Then, add candy pumpkins on top, according to icanteachmychild.com.

Hack: Replace the pumpkins with gummy worms to take the treats to the next level.

Bonus hack: Add chocolate pudding in the bottom to make "mud."

Banana ghosts and clementine pumpkins

Don't go bananas this Halloween season. Eat them instead. Make the fruit into ghosts by cutting them in half and using chocolate chips for the mouth and eyes, according to One Little Project. You can also add celery to the tops of clementines to make them into pumpkins.

Apple mummies

These apple mummies are nothing to be scared of, according to Two Healthy Kitchens, a blog featuring tasty, easy-to-make recipes. In order to re-create the healthy treat, run a vegetable peeler over apple halves a few times, add some mini chocolate chips for the eyes, and enjoy.